Vonne Gut Reactions: Player Piano

(I apologize for the title. It's the best I could come up with right now. If you can come up with a better pun, suggest it,  please.)

I'm not a resolution kinda guy, but I was looking for something else to do this year than focus on work. The current choice is reading all of Kurt Vonnegut's novels. My goal is to get them finished by the end of the summer. Fourteen novels, seven and a half months - that seems reasonable.

Luckily, Calen is reading along with me.

First up, Player Piano, Vonnegut's first novel.

Be warned: Here there be SPOILERS

• I don't know what a first novel is supposed to read like. Somehow I expected sloppiness, errors, ham-handed dialogue. I didn't get any of that, so I guess I was happy.
• Calen commented that she was curious as to whether Vonnegut's characterization of women would continue to be as negative as they were in this book. The women portrayed here are absolutely pathetic. They exist only to gain status via their husbands' accomplishments and social status. She brought up that in Slaughterhouse 5 (she's apparently cheated and read ahead) Billy Pilgrim's wife is shrill, Montana Wildhack is a porn star, and Vonnegut's war buddy has a wife who hates Vonnegut's visits. It's one thing for a male author to struggle to represent female characters, but admittedly the female characters here are all but worthless. The only skills they have are in seducing their husbands (the main character's wife is particularly noteworthy for her sexual prowess according to Dr Proteus, himself), socializing while the men get together to work, taking secretarial notes, or redecorating the kitchen. I'll be curious to see whether this issue continues throughout the other thirteen novels.

• Vonnegut's theorem in the book seemed a little unsubtle, admittedly. He even had a reverend - who would go on to become a somewhat major character - lay the entire theory out about fifty pages into the book. The book centers around the idea that technology, machines in specific, are taking the positions and jobs - but more importantly the usefulness - of people. People, then, find themselves without anything to do but pass the time in unuseful pursuits - standing around on government jobs, betting on television music, and just generally malaising. It's not a Brave New World style malaise where the proletariat is boffing themselves into a stupor; it's just people being displaced by computers running things a little more efficiently. There simply isn't the concurrent effort by the government to make sure the people are happy / blissful / ignorant.
• One of the clumsier parts of the book is the use of the visiting Sheik who is a little too obviously the reader's chance to ask questions about the society.Vonnegut tours the Sheik around the US, stopping in at typical American citizen/slaves and asking the questions that an outsider would ask about the society. Yes, the Sheik eventually crosses into the main storyline, but it's a very brief encounter and clearly one not worthy of the Sheik's inclusion in the book. To a large extent, I felt the same about the football chapter. Why was it there?
• The wrap up of the story was also a little off with the battle about to be joined then the main character all but passing out only to be revived days later when everything was already wrapped up. We built and built toward a war and got a recap of an unsuccessful war. Sort of anticlimactic.
• I did enjoy the book but am happy to know that Vonnegut did much better work later.